Iran Said To Move Forward On Uranium Enrichment
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
VIENNA, Austria — Technicians have assembled two small uranium enrichment units at Iran’s underground Natanz complex, diplomats and officials said yesterday. The move underscored Tehran’s defiance of a U.N. Security Council ban on the program, which can be used to create nuclear arms.
Speaking separately — and demanding anonymity because their information was confidential — a diplomat accredited to the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency and an America official said two cascades of 164 centrifuges connected in series had been set up in recent days.
The likely next step was “dry testing” — running the linkups without uranium gas inside, to be followed by spinning and respinning the gas until it reached required level of enrichment — low for energy, high for the fissile core of nuclear warheads.
The news had been widely expected. Both the Iranian leadership and the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency had said recently that Tehran would start assembling the machines this month.
Comments last week by President Ahmadinejad of Iran signaled that Iran would begin the installation before February 11 — the final day of nationwide celebrations in memory of the Islamic revolution.
In another sign that Tehran was forging ahead with plans to create a large-scale “pilot plant” — 3,000 centrifuges running in series — U.N. officials late last week told the AP that piping, cables, control panels, and air conditioning systems had been installed at Natanz to support such a number of machines.
Still, with Tehran under U.N. sanctions because of its refusal to give up the program, any decision by Iran to start assembling the so-called “cascades” ups the ante in Tehran’s confrontation with countries such as America that believe it is trying to make nuclear weapons.
Iran says it wants to use the technology to generate nuclear power, but enriched uranium, the end product, can also be used for the fissile core of nuclear warheads if it is enriched to high-level weapons grade. A 3,000-centrifuge operation — the cornerstone of what the Iranians say will be a large-scale complex of 54,000 centrifuges — could be used to produce fissile material for two bombs a year.
